Overview
Louis Darquier (19 December 1897 – 29 August 1980), better known under his assumed name Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, was Commissioner-General for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime.
Biography
A veteran of World War I, Darquier had been active in Fascist and antisemitic politics in France in the 1930s, being a member, at various times, of Action Française, Croix-de-Feu and Jeunesses Patriotes. On 6 February 1934 he was injured at the Place de la Concorde riot, and, according to Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times in 2006, "parlayed (his) new status as a 'man of 6 February' into a leadership role." A British report in 1942 called him "one of the most notorious anti-semites in France". Darquier's ascent to this post immediately preceded the first mass deportations of Jews from France to concentration camps. He was fired in February 1944 when, in Nicholas Fraser's words, "his greed and incompetence could no longer be countenanced." His successor was Charles du Paty de Clam.
On 10 December 1947 he was sentenced to death in absentia, national degradation for life and the confiscation of his property by the French High Court of Justice for collaboration. He was one of a number of French exiles, including Abel Bonnard, Georges and Maud Guilbaud, and Alain Laubreaux. In 1978, a French journalist from L'Express magazine interviewed him. Among other things, Darquier declared that in Auschwitz, gas chambers were not used to kill humans, but only lice, and that allegations of killings by this method were lies by the Jews. When L'Express published the interview, it caused an immediate scandal. The extradition of Darquier was requested, but was refused by Spain.
See also
* Union générale des israélites de France
Cited sources
* Fraser, Nicholas (2006) "Toujours Vichy: a reckoning with disgrace," Harper's, pp. 86–94. Review of two books, including Callil, Bad Faith.
Further reading
* Peter Conrad, Vile days in Vichy, The Observer, 26 March 2006. Accessed online 11 October 2006. * Encyclopedia of the Holocaust Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis. https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184504/http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/text/x05/xm0584.html * David A. Bell, "The Collaborator," The Nation, 11 December 2006, pp. 28–36. Review of Bad Faith by Carmen Callil, includes a summary of that book. * Frederick Brown, The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914–1940 (Knopf, 2014.)